The present invention is directed to a data processing system and more particularly to a local area network communication system which includes a plurality of remote processing devices connected to a common communication channel for transferring data between the processing devices and a host processing device, which each remote processing device may operate under a different communication protocol.
With the advent of low cost data processing devices such as personal computers, point-of-sale data terminal devices, etc., local communication networks have been developed to handle a large number of processing devices that may be used within a local business environment. In prior data processing systems, because of the complexity of the communication protocol associated with each processing device, a single communication protocol was utilized for each data processing system. Thus, if a processing device is added to a processing system after it had been installed and in operation, such processing device would have been required to operate with the same communication protocol as that of the other processing devices in the system. This restriction has limited the sales appeal of such data processing system.
It is therefore the principal object of this invention to provide a processing system which can accommodate a plurality of remote processing devices each of which can operate under a different communication protocol.
It is a further object of this invention to provide a system for selecting the communication protocol associated with each of the processing devices found in a data processing system.